Japanese typewriter

{{Short description|Typewriter used to produce Japanese script}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2014}}

File:JapaneseTtypewriter.jpg

File:Arrangement of letters of Japanese typewriter.png order. Kanji are arranged based on their on'yomi.]]

The first practical {{nihongo|Japanese typewriter|和文タイプライター|wabun taipuraitā|lead=yes}} was invented by Kyota Sugimoto in 1915. Out of the thousands of kanji characters, Kyota's original typewriter used 2,400 of them.{{Cite book |title=Minimalism: Designing Simplicity |last=Obendorf |first=Hartmut |publisher=Springer Science & Business Media |year=2009 |isbn=9781848823709 |location=Dordrecht |pages=114 }} He obtained the patent rights to the typewriter that he invented in 1929.{{cite web |publisher=Japan Patent Office |url=https://www.jpo.go.jp/e/introduction/rekishi/10hatsumeika/kyota_sugimoto.html |title=Kyota Sugimoto (Japanese Typewriter) |date=7 October 2002 |access-date=18 September 2022}} Sugimoto's typewriter met its competition when the Oriental Typewriter was invented by Shimada Minokichi.{{Cite book |title=The Chinese Typewriter: A History |last=Mullaney |first=Thomas S. |publisher=MIT Press |year=2018 |isbn=9780262036368 |location=Cambridge, MA |pages=205 }} The Otani Japanese Typewriter Company and Toshiba also released their own typewriters later.

The Japanese typewriter was bulky and laborious to use. Unlike the English-language typewriter, which allows the typist to key in text quickly, one needed to locate and then retrieve the desired character from a large matrix of metal characters.{{Cite book|title=Word-Processing Technology in Japan: Kanji and the Keyboard |last=Gottlieb |first=Nanette |publisher=Routledge |year=2013 |isbn=978-0700712229 |location=Oxford |pages=10–11 }} For instance, to type a sentence, the typist would need to find and retrieve around 22 symbols from about three different character matrices, making the sentence longer to type than its romanized version. For this reason, typists were required to undergo specialized training, and typing documents was not part of the duties of the ordinary office worker.